Everyone experiences psychosomatic symptoms at some point that do not constitute an illness. Having to give a lecture in front of a large number of people, for example, can cause the heart to race. But, for many people, such symptomatology, which is not an illness, can become a problem. In one out of three people, this can be so extreme that it ends up becoming a serious medical problem, reports Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan, an expert in “psychosomatic illnesses” at the Royal London Hospital, United Kingdom.
Some people develop an illness because they cannot overcome a trauma and bury it. As they do not accept it, the negative feeling transforms through somatization. But that is not the only reason. It is also related to how the mind reacts to the body. If I have a pain in my hand and decide not to worry, it might go away, but if I decide to worry constantly about it, it can become a more obvious pain, a weakness. For many people, psychosomatic illness is a cry for help. For others, a dysfunctional way of dealing with what their body does.
These people are truly ill. Much more so than most of those who suffer from a physical illness. However, psychosomatic illness has been found between medicine, psychiatry, and psychology, so no one has taken full responsibility for the issue. Furthermore, there is also a stigma among doctors, as in society as a whole, since if we are faced with two blind people, one due to a traffic accident and the other due to psychosomatic blindness, we tend to consider that the person who suffered the accident has more urgency.
Many patients diagnosed with psychosomatic illnesses end up feeling insulted and misunderstood by the diagnosis. Their first reaction is usually: “You think I’m doing it on purpose” or “You think I’m making it up.”
O’Sullivan points out that every time we cry, laugh, or get angry, or when we feel so sad that we can barely get out of bed, or when we feel nauseous after learning that a friend suffered food poisoning, we are experiencing psychosomatic phenomena. In fact, up to 30% of those who visit their family doctor in the United Kingdom (and 50% of women who go to the gynecologist) show symptoms that cannot be explained by a physical cause, which suggests they could have a psychosomatic origin.
Anyone, to a certain extent, can have an imaginary illness (without physical bases to support it); the key is knowing how to recognize it. If you wake up with palpitations and/or dizziness, you can try to read your body and see if something is disturbing you, which makes the symptomatology more manageable. And the fact that blindness, fatigue, seizures, or paralysis are of psychological origin does not make them less debilitating or less real than other illnesses.
One of O’Sullivan’s biggest concerns is the rate of misdiagnoses, which happen when doctors overlook the psychological origin of these illnesses, prescribing medications or even surgeries. There is little data on how to treat psychosomatic illnesses, but O’Sullivan often refers her patients to psychiatrists to apply antidepressant drugs or to cognitive behavioral therapists, who may be able to unmask the pain or trauma that caused the illness. Cognitive therapy has been shown to be very helpful in evaluating and changing patients’ distorted ideas about illnesses.
In this sense, to begin treating psychosomatic illnesses, it is important for the patient to become aware of their problem at home, work, etc., or what situation puts them under stress. While it is true that drugs can help, relaxation techniques are often effective in managing anxiety and catastrophic anticipation.
Finally, patients must be taught to share problems with others, anticipate and manage stress, and, above all, preserve their self-esteem despite difficulties that may arise at a certain moment in their lives. All these therapeutic strategies will be acquired with the Master in Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy from ISEP, a master’s for psychologists designed by psychologists and with the recognition of Technical-Professional interest by the Ibero-American Federation of Psychology Associations and Colleges (FIAP).